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If you have electric vehicles in your fleet that you would like to utilize in your schedule, you should set the following preferences:
Charging Management (optional)
In this article, you will learn how to configure the Charging Management preference. You can use this preference to account for the electricity cost policy in your region. For example, if the electricity costs vary throughout the day, you may want to avoid charging your vehicles when the prices are higher. It also lets you set a grid limit to define the maximum output of the chargers throughout the day.
Notes:
Before setting up this preference, make sure you configure the Charging Stations preference.
Note: This preference can also be made available in the Planning product as a part of the Timetable Optimization (TTO) Suite. The Planning version of the preference looks and works identically, so the instructions in this article still apply there.
Accessing the preference
Open Preferences.
Switch to the All tab underneath the search bar.
In the Electric Vehicles section, click Charging Management.
Hover over + Charging Management and click + New Charging Management. You can create additional instances later with this button.
Enter the name of the cost instance you are creating and select the relevant charger locations.
Setting electricity costs
6. In the Set Electriticy Cost section, you can set the electricity costs and how they change throughout the day.
You will see a line that represents 24 hours. If you hover over the line, you will see a + icon. Clicking it will split the line in two, dividing 24h into two 12h segments. You can split every time segment as many times as needed.
Above each segment, you can enter the corresponding cost of electricity per kWh. To merge two segments back into one, click the trash bin icon between them.
Note: the costs you set will only apply to the selected locations. If the prices differ at other locations, you can create separate cost instances for them.
Setting grid limits
7. In the Set Grid Limit section, you can define how the maximum output of the charging stations changes throughout the day. You will see a line that looks and functions the same way as the one described in the Setting electricity costs section. The only difference is that here you define values in kW.
Saving changes and optimizing
8. Once finished, click Save & Close and run an optimization. The system will attempt to schedule charging events in a way that is the most cost-effective based on your configurations. You can evaluate the efficiency of optimization by checking the Total Cost in the KPI Dashboard. The electricity cost is included in the calculation: